In "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry", Whitman tries to understand the relationship between human beings across time. Whitman tries to figure out what he means to the people he sees, the crowds of strangers that inhabit Brooklyn. In the poem he assumes we will see everything as he does and share the same feelings as he had even in years to come. This is the connection, of the shared experience, between us in the future and him in the present.
             Walt Whitman tries to understand the importance of this shared experience, in hopes it will transcend time and mortality to reach us in the future. He thought it would invoke the same emotions, feelings and questions this place invokes in him. This makes us part of a whole, connects us together, both present and future. He explains that the body, where the self and world come together, designates us as individuals, but also helps us partakes in this shared experience. "I too had received identity by my body; That I was, I knew was of my body-and what I should be, I knew I should be on my body." (Whitman 6)
             Whitman's main message to us is summarized in his question to us, "What is it, then, between us?". (Whitman 5) The answer is time. He believes this place is beautiful and speaks to us like we will see it the same as he did someday. Later in the poem, his true thoughts of the future are revealed. He knows that in years to come is will not be the same, just as it wasn't years before him, this is his way of asking us, people of the future, not to let his beloved Brooklyn change. He knows with time comes change. People get
            
            
             greedy and new technologies are developed and things will be destroyed to make way for industrialization. "Refusals, hates, postponements, meanness, laziness, none of these wanting." (Whitman 7) He too has felt ...